We had been eating fish, down at Tourkolimano. (I know I should have written Mikrolimano - but I hate changing names I grew up with. They are history - my history).

My guest was a French philosopher. He was talking about Greece. Not the beaches, but the essence. I was listening carefully. As usual, foreigners have interesting things to say. You see, they reflect about us - we only react.

- There are two Diaspora peoples in the world, the Jews and the Greeks, he said. The problem with you Greeks was that you always had a country.

No we didn't - I thought. During our Dark Ages, Greeks, decimated by barbarians and epidemics had actually vanished from the mainland. They had to be reimported later. But I did not speak. The man has a theory, I said to myself - you only have an objection. Be un-greek and let him speak.

- Two diaspora people, two chosen people - but only one fatherland, he continued.

I had a vague recollection of having heard that theory before. But the sun was just right and there is an authentic Zephyr blowing from the Saronic in May. I had no intention of trying to remember when and where.

- So the Jews went on and created things - thought, art, science - in every single country they lived, from Arabic Spain, to early twentieth century Vienna. They contributed to the local civilisation, in the local style and language. You, on the other hand, torn between homesickness and the sickness of home, create your culture in other countries.

- I didn't get that about the sickness...

- Excuse me - it was a bad pun. What I meant was that Greeks are sick of their country, when they live in it (they kill you with their γκρίνια!) becoming terribly homesick when they leave it. It is a strange dialectic - when they are in, they want out and vice versa. One half of the total population lives abroad (and would like to return, some day) the other half lives in Greece and dreams of emigrating.

- What did you mean with creating our culture in foreign countries?

- Well, I am not en expert in your culture - but let us take the names every Greek is proud of. Callas and Mitropoulos, Kazantzakis and Kavafis - why, every Greek who brought it to something, either lived abroad, or was recognized abroad. How many people had heard of Seferis in Greece, before he was awarded the Nobel prize? His last volume of verse had sold less than a hundred copies in seven years! Your greatest abstract painter was Spyropoulos. Foreigners honored him with the UNESCO and Herder prizes. He was shown at the Guggenheim, the Documenta, the Biennale. Greeks first heard about him when he died. You import your own culture - in the same way you re-imported your ancient culture after the Turkish occupation.

A woman tried to sell us “original Greek lace” (probably made in Taiwan).

- Have you noticed, he continued, that not one of your great poets was born in the Greek mainland? Solomos and Kalvos were not even Greek citizens - and their mother tongue was Italian. Sikelianos also came from the Ionian islands, Elytis was born in Crete - his family originating from Lesbos - and Kavafis (also not a Greek subject) lived in Alexandria. Your only two philosophers of any importance, Castoriadis and Axelos, are French citizens and write in my language - and so is your most avant-garde musician, Iannis Xenakis.

- Well, I broke in - I can remember, when I was at school, I had to read the novels of Kazantzakis in English or French, because they had not been published in Greek. Imagine, the original appearing only after the translation became an international best-seller!

- Axelos once said in a lecture, that it is impossible to be a philosopher in modern Greece. I would broaden that statement to include all kinds of intellectual and creative activity.

- Don't you think you are going too far? After all, there is a lot of things happening around!

- Yes, but the important ones are either created outside Greece, or in Greece with foreign influence (or money) and for a foreign public. Tsarouhis worked for a foreign art dealer. (I can remember him conceiving his vision of pure new Greek art, in Paris!) Look at the movies of Theo Angelopoulos! The sculpture of Takis!

- Nobody is a prophet in his own country!

- If this is true in most cases, it is much truer in Greece, said my guest. There is something in this country that kills creativity. I think it is the proliferation of genius. You are a singularly gifted race - again like the Jews. But too much genius, in a small country, is bad for the nerves. There is no breathing space. There is no public. A brilliant small minority and a totally indifferent majority. The minority suffocates. All transmitters, no receivers. A very frustrating situation for talented people. So, as long as they remain in Greece, they use all their talent to trip up the next guy.

- Emigration is the answer?

- Yes, and not only for the artist or the intellectual. It is the same with the big businessman. He too is a creator. Why are the richest Greeks to be found outside Greece? Think of your shipowners!

- So according to you, the best of Greece is to be found abroad?

- Also the worst. When I meet Greeks in other countries, I usually have the feeling you are exporting all your extremes. But the most interesting thing for me, as a non-Greek, is that strange, love-hate relationship you have with your country. You simultaneously despise and glorify it. You denigrate it, speaking among yourselves - and you praise it to the stars, when talking to foreigners. You cannot create within its boundaries, but you cannot survive without it. My people had a different problem. You know, I am a Jew.

- I want to see what happens to the Jews, now that they have a country of their own, I said.

- It will take time, until they realize the fact. Decades, maybe centuries. And who knows, they may then find themselves in your position. Ah, my friend, it is not easy to be the “chosen people”. You know what I mean - Greeks also feel that way about themselves.

It was late. I paid the bill, drove my philosopher to his hotel and bade him farewell. On the way home I remembered a small satirical poem I had found in an anthology of light verse:

How odd
of God
to choose
the Jews.

How odd of God to create so complex beings - with so many illusions, so many conflicts, so many problems - lasting lifetimes, centuries, millenniums! Genius and pettiness, chauvinism and escapism, guilt and glory, insecurity and aggressiveness, myths and deceptions. Diaspora, melancholy, nostalgia. All very Greek words.

Depression. I tried reaction by versification:

How odd
of Jesus
to choose us.

O yes! It is hard to be the `chosen people'. Especially if you do not choose yourself.